Puzzle Cube

I built this puzzle cube and gave it to my granddaughter for her birthday. She loves 3-D puzzles such as this and she’s currently working to solve it. I’m sure she’ll have it figured out pretty soon. The sections of this puzzle are made from various scraps of walnut & hard maple I had laying around. The second photo shows all the parts of the disassembled cube. The pegs are made from oak dowels. I sanded everything down to 320 grit and applied a couple of coats of BLO.

I have made quite a few of these puzzles and they are always very popular. I have never put dowels in mine but think itès a very cool idea. did you have a pattern to know where to drill the dowel holesÉ

Drilling the holes is pretty straightforward. The dimensions of my assembled (i.e. solved) cube is 3” x 3”. All the parts are 1” thick. Four parts are “L” shaped—3” long x 2” wide. One part is T-Shaped (3” L x 3” W) and one part is Z-shaped (3” L x 3” W). Once I had the parts cut out I fitted them together into a cube like I would if I was assembling the puzzle. Then I taped the whole thing together with clear packing tape. I drilled two 3/8” holes on each side (in the middle but 1/2” from the edge. You’ll notice that each side of the cube is 9” square and the holes are symmetrically placed on three sides (see the first photo)—and since I drilled all the way thru, the same was true on the other 3 sides. I.e. I drilled 6 holes. You can look at photo 2 to see where I glued in the dowels. The remaining holes I enlarged a bit to make it easier to assemble. Note that one of the parts doesn’t have a dowel at all—and there’s one dowel left over. That’s the last part put in when assembling the puzzle. Hope this helps.